THE NORTHEAST COAST FISHERIES 491 



maintained that these natural rights, enjoyed as British 

 subjects before the Revolution, had never been yielded or 

 lost by the war of independence, nor forfeited by the result- 

 ing changes in sovereignty over Canadian waters. As " ten- 

 ants in common " with Great Britain, the Americans held all 

 fishery rights in northeastern waters, both open and terri- 

 torial, and by the " partition " of the territory of North 

 America, effected in the treaty of 1783, these fishery rights 

 were in no manner destroyed or abridged. He wrote some 

 years later (1822): 



The inhabitants of the United States had as clear a right to 

 every branch of the fisheries, and to cure fish on land, as the 

 inhabitants of Canada or Nova Scotia. . . . the citizens of Boston, 

 New York, or Philadelphia had as clear a right to these fisheries, 

 and to cure fish on land, as the inhabitants of London, Liverpool, 

 Bristol, Glasgow or Dublin ; fourthly, that the third article was 

 demanded as an ultimatum, and it was declared that no treaty of 

 peace should be made without that article. And when the British 

 ministers found that peace could not be made without that article, 

 they consented, for Britain wanted peace, if possible more than 

 we did ; fifthly, we asked no favor, we requested no grant, and 

 would accept none. 



Following the same line of argument, Rufus King, in 

 addressing the Senate in 1818, said that the fisheries "on 

 the coasts and bays of the provinces conquered in America 

 from the French were acquired by the common sword, and 

 mingled blood of Americans and Englishmen members of 

 the same empire, we, with them, had a common right to these 

 fisheries ; and, in the division of the empire England con- 

 firmed our title without condition or limitation; a title 

 equally irrevocable with those of our boundaries or of our 

 independence itself." 



In a celebrated pamphlet on the " Fisheries and the Mis- 

 sissippi," in which this controversy over American fishery 

 rights is discussed at great length, John Quincy Adams 

 said : 



As a possession it was to be held by the people of the United 

 States as it had been held before. It was not, like the land parti- 



